More to deal

I’m a dark child, I tend to stay out of people’s way, be my own best friend and learn that most days I always feel in the wrong, lately it’s harder and harder to express myself, for so many reasons. 1. Which feels probably irrelevant is that I’m a November baby, I’m a Scorpio, and even though I don’t follow the astrology part of it, the personality aspect of it is pretty spot on. Most of my life I feel like I don’t even exist, barely understood and that’s just the way it is. I live in an Era where you can’t really express your thoughts or opinions anymore because they are always met with pure hate and malice, it tends to be suffocating.

I always spent time trying to understand why love or maybe the whole deal just seems to escape me, why happiness seems only book relevent, you right it down and it tends to be your reality. When it comes to relationships people often find themselves saying it should come naturally and you shouldn’t have to force it. That saying is a mask for people who in short are basic, we at some point get entitled or show that they should be. People walk in the sun only to be burned severely by it. I guess naturally I feel that way, deep donend I don’t depend on others and I stay to myself because you don’t get rescued, the distance you go is the distance you make and maybe I’m not making or putting enough distance in my life.

I feel like I struggle not because I’m a man or 31 or gay or having hiv, or even being black. There are days some more than others that I’m just blunt have my own way of doing things and have expecations and I get sick of sitting in the corner with the dunce cap looking at everyone else live. The saddest part of living sometimes is knowing that it’s not that people don’t care it’s that life is so short sometimes that you can’t afford to feel like you wasted any of it, cause people want to be more than ordinary instead of 100% all the time. Everything is a show.

The scales of Hiv Criminalization

This topic is a hard one to digest, even harder to meditate on, events are moving in a way that we need to really adress Hiv, not just about testing I will get to that in another post, I want to take time out in several postings to really focus on the chains that have dragged normal everyday people with hiv to hell in a manner of speaking.

Imagine a world where having hiv is just the beginning of the many changes of that will effect your life, now there is medication that hopefully you won’t have to many side effects from. You change your everyday life to keep yourself going. Looking for a community that you can share your experiences with, to keep you from feeling alone in your struggles. You get to that place where your ready to step out into the world and date and try and love again. Little do you know there are obstacles in place that can and will change your life if you turn the corner and it greats you in the face like an IRS audit.

When Ryan White came into existence, right after it in the scare of a global epidemic of Hiv and Aids came the Hiv Criminalization laws. Now these very laws have turned some minor offenses into groundbreaking means to put people in prison for the rest of their lives virtually burying people with no hope of understanding or real common sense context, as to what hiv was then and what it is now. These laws have not changed since they were birthed into our America, they still do a great deal of harm. Maybe you have heard the stories, from a homeless man spitting on an officer to a simple random encounter have had their lives assassinated.

Currently there are 67 laws specifically on hiv, in 35 states 24 of them require by law that you disclose your status if you are aware that you have hiv, 14 of these also cover sharing needles in 29 if convicted it’s a felony. OK let’s move forward, here is how the law in our country view the transmission of hiv on the same level of assult, attempted murder, manslaughter and murder, some even having to register as a sex offender after all is said and done.

Upon some research at lawatlas.org i found that it breaks down the criminal sentencing one could face, really depending on the state you face a misdemeanor to a felony, go It can range from 6 months to life in prison. In some states it permits enhanced sentencing basically meaning that they impose more than the usual sentencing based on the nature of the case. In my next post I would like to do more research and break down all the states and how their laws effect you and your hiv status.